


Deserters We Are Called

by elysiumwaits



Series: Whumptober 2019 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Morality, Hurt Stiles, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Sexual Bondage, Warning: Kate Argent, Whump, Whumptober 2019, no infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 11:17:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20873324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: Peter opens the trunk after a job and finds Stiles inside. He'd call it fate, but it's more likely that this is just the result of another ill-advised choice they've made.--Peter opens the trunk with a dead man’s keys and pauses - he can’t say he’s surprised, exactly, but this is… unexpected.“Well,” Peter says. “When I suggested Malibu, I meant the location, not the trunk of one.”Stiles glares back at him, but doesn’t even try to speak past the duct tape covering his mouth.--Written for Whumptober Day 2, with the alternate prompt 16 - "Bound."





	Deserters We Are Called

**Author's Note:**

> Tagged with “Graphic Violence” because I like being safe rather than sorry, considered tagging it Explicit but there are no actual sex acts in this, just pretty crass mentions of some, and a whole lot of swearing.
> 
> Okay, so the Google searches I’ve had to make for my Whumptober lists are definitely going to end with me in an interrogation room somewhere. That said, car bombs are complicated, so please ignore the handwaviness of it.
> 
> Also, there is no infidelity, just the complications that come with ambiguous relationship boundaries. It is implied that Stiles has slept with both Peter and Derek, separately. Well, the Derek part is implied. The Peter part is pretty darn obvious.
> 
> I chose to do an alternate prompt for Day 2 - “Bound”, alt 16 - because I was having trouble with the prompt “explosion.” And then I was like, “Hm, this would be better with an explosion.”
> 
> Edit: I always forget - Title is from "Bad Company," originally by Bad Company (but the best version for this fic is the Five Finger Death Punch version in my opinion).

Peter’s just set the bomb when he hears the first of the thumps. He pauses on his way back to his car, does a mental calculation to see if he’s got the time to care about this - he does, if he’s quick about it, so he gives into the curiosity and follows the rhythmic thumping to the trunk. 

He’s expecting a body, of course, and one that’s still alive, as he is intimately familiar with the distinct sounds of frustrated people being helped captive inside the trunks of cars. There’s a certain thump that comes along with someone trying to kick out a tail light, and another one that’s more indicative of trying to get attention. This thump is definitely an attention-getter.

Peter opens the trunk with a dead man’s keys and pauses - he can’t say he’s surprised, exactly, but this is… unexpected.

“Well,” Peter says. “When I suggested Malibu, I meant the location, not the trunk of one.”

Stiles glares back at him, but doesn’t even try to speak past the duct tape covering his mouth. He’s disheveled, to say the least, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans that have seen better days. The left half of his is face covered in bruises that are already on their way to healing, and there are three distinct scratches across his left cheek - insult to injury, Peter would wager. At least his eyes are clear, so he’s not likely to bleed out or fall unconscious anytime soon. 

There’s not enough time to do a full inventory of everywhere that Stiles could be injured, at least not here. Peter pulls his knife from his pocket and breaks the zip tie binding Stiles’ ankles together before helping Stiles out of the trunk and onto his feet. Stiles makes a motion with his arms, presumably attempting to draw attention to the hands still bound behind his back, accompanied by an emphatic but muffled sound behind the tape.

“No time, darling, clock’s ticking.” Peter closes the knife and pockets it again, helps Stiles hobble to Peter’s car. The zip tie had been tight, and Stiles winces as blood comes rushing back to his feet. He’s not wearing shoes, just socks, but there’s no glass on the road. Personally, Peter would prefer to carry him in the name of efficiency, but an offended Stiles is an even more difficult than usual Stiles. He does, however, notice the slight limp that seems to be bothering Stiles’ right leg.

He gets Stiles in the passenger seat and himself in the driver’s seat, and then they’re gone. He doesn’t look back when he hears the explosion go off, but Stiles starts a little, glancing over his shoulder to watch the fireball that used to be Gerard Argent’s Chevrolet Malibu before it disappears in the distance. 

“This was not how I expected my day to go,” Peter says as he drives. 

The road is a relatively quiet one that doesn’t see much traffic, but he can’t exactly account for when someone will call the scene in, and he’d like to be comfortably far away when that happens. If he’s honest, there’s something he loves about having Stiles as a captive audience - in the loosest form of captive, considering Peter’s only tried to kill him a handful of times, and certainly not within the last two years.

He pulls over a few minutes later, digs out his pocket knife again. Stiles obligingly twists so that Peter can get at his wrists, and Peter frowns even as he gets the zip tie sliced open. Immediately, Stiles flops back into the seat, fumbles to get a grip on the tape over his mouth, but it’s clear that he doesn’t have feeling back in his fingers again. 

“Stop that,” Peter says, reaches and peels some of the tape up with his nail. “If you rip it off, you’ll take skin with it. You look bad enough as it is.” 

He’s expecting Stiles to try and bat him away, but Stiles just slouches against the seat again, drops his hands to his lap. It takes some time, and it’s infinitely more painful than Peter is sure either of them would like given the lack of anything to ease the tape away, but he finally gets the strip of tape off. 

To his surprise, Stiles doesn’t start talking immediately. 

Peter lifts one of Stiles’ hands, examines the marks left behind by the zip tie. “Damage?” he asks, reaching for the other hand to give that a lookover as well. 

“A lot, but nothing deadly. My hands will be fine,” Stiles replies, and Peter looks up at his face, sharply. 

He sounds rough, hoarse. Like Peter’s known his voice to be after talking for a long time, or yelling over sirens and gunshots, or, on one occasion Peter would very much like to forget, immediately following a few hours in the not-so-tender care of an Argent. Considering that Peter just found him in the trunk of Gerard Argent’s car, he’s got good reason to believe that this may be a repeat of that last one. 

Peter eyes the shirt that Stiles is wearing again, now that he’s got a moment and they’re not standing by a car that’s about to explode. It’s a plain dark blue cotton, but there are definitely dark stains, though none of them look wet. He puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, gentle in case there’s something there he can’t see, and nudges Stiles forward so that Peter can get a look at his back.

“That looks painful,” Peter remarks after a moment of studying the uncomfortably large bloodstain that seems to make up most of Stiles’ back. It’s mostly dry, which is both a relief and a concern, as it means that Stiles isn’t still actively bleeding while simultaneously meaning that Stiles has had it long enough that he isn’t still actively bleeding. It also seems to be stuck to Stiles’ skin in places. “Going to hurt coming off.”

“It is,” Stiles replies, and sits back in the seat. “And it will.” 

To anyone not intimately familiar with Stiles, it would look like a relaxed sprawl, like he feels no pain at all and is perfectly content where he is, despite the obvious bruising on his face and the marks on his wrists. To Peter, he looks exhausted, and there’s a tension around his eyes that speaks of pain. After a moment of studying him and Stiles giving him the same scrutiny in return, Peter reaches over and slowly draws the seatbelt down, clicking it into place over Stiles. 

“We have a long drive,” he says when Stiles just raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. It isn’t often that Stiles is so tired he doesn’t want to talk. “Getting pulled over while you look like a kidnapping victim would be unfortunate. Let’s not tempt fate by not wearing a seatbelt.”

“To be completely fair, I was a kidnapping victim until like fifteen minutes ago.” Stiles settles, though, as Peter puts the car back into drive and heads back out onto the long, empty road. “Speaking of, that  _ was _ Gerard Argent, right?”

“It was,” Peter confirms. “Business, surprisingly, not pleasure.”

Stiles snorts. “I’m sure there was some pleasure in there, too. We are talking about Gerard Argent, after all.”

“To be very frank, I consider killing him to be my charitable act for the world this year.” Peter smirks. “The fact that I got paid for it is just the world’s way of thanking me.”

“Actually,” Stiles says, and then pauses to clear his throat when it comes out a little more rough than it should. Peter opens the console between them with the hand not on the wheel and pulls out a water bottle to pass it over. “Thanks.” 

“For the water or for getting you out of the trunk?”

Stiles doesn’t sputter the water, but Peter glances over just in time to see him roll his eyes. “Both,” he says after he’s drained half the bottle and twisted the cap back on. “But not for the reasons you think.”

Peter arches an eyebrow, looks at Stiles and then back at the road. “I’m well aware that you’re a cynic, darling, and usually I share those sentiments, but even I thought you’d be happy to be alive.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am.” Stiles drops the water bottle into the cup holder between them. “But not out of a love of life or unfinished business or anything like that. I’m happy to be alive because it means Kate’s plan didn’t work.”

Peter turns that over in his mind for a second before he gives Stiles a look. “I know you’re sitting on the information like you need to use it for leverage, and we both know that you don’t have to do that with me. If I were going to kill you, I would have done it years ago.”

“Before you learned that I give great head?”

“Don’t be crass, darling.”

“Sorry,” Stiles replies, tone indicating that he’s not sorry at all. “Before you learned that I’m a champion cocksucker?”

“Sounds like you’ve got some concerns there, sweetheart, would you like me to pull over again so you can make your point?” 

He’s not going to, they both know it. Pick a reason, honestly - Stiles’ voice is far too hoarse, Stiles is fresh off what Peter can safely assume was a pretty intense interrogation, Stiles is sitting on information that he’s not shared yet and a blowjob would just be a distraction, they need to be safely away from a murder scene as soon as possible… the list of reasons is endless. Among them, not as high up as it probably should be, is Peter’s nephew.

Speaking of which. “I thought you would be with Derek,” Peter says, and very carefully  _ doesn’t _ look over at Stiles this time, hands tightening on the wheel. “The trunk of a car in Kansas is a long way from Sacramento.”

Silence follows, punctuated only by the gentle sound of Stiles shifting against the seat. “Yeah,” Stiles finally breathes out in a sigh, quiet and tired instead of sarcasm or sass or wit.

Just like that, Peter’s not feeling so fortunate at having found Stiles in the trunk after all. Sure, he’s glad that Stiles isn’t dead in a fiery explosion of Peter’s making - fucking thrilled, actually, now that he’s got a moment to think about how terrible  _ that _ would have been, to have essentially been paid for murdering Stiles. There’s a very short list of people that Peter would genuinely grieve for and feel true despair about killing, and Stiles is on it. Rather high, too. Derek is on it, too - slightly lower than Stiles, if Peter is being honest, but there nonetheless.

But he is thinking that maybe it would have been easier just not to have found Stiles at all. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. Whatever put Stiles in Gerard Argent’s trunk is probably going to be a big pain in the ass, and no doubt highly unpleasant. 

“Where’s Derek, Stiles?” Peter asks, even and measured. No pet names, no ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’ now that this just became business, not pleasure. You don’t get far in their line of work without learning how to compartmentalize, and do it well.

“I don’t know.” The water bottle makes a little plastic cracking sound as Stiles fidgets with it. “Fucking… Kate got me first, so you know he went down without a fight once she had a knife to my neck. Separated us, and I haven’t seen him since they were stuffing me into that fucking trunk.” 

More plastic sounds, and Peter considers throwing the bottle out the window. Be a shame to be pulled over for littering too, though, not that there’s anywhere on this flat fucking road for a cop to hide. Besides, Stiles is prickly without something to fidget with, especially when shit is in the process of hitting the fan.

“She’s got some big revenge plan,” Stiles says. “For us killing Chris and Ally. So she tried to get me to tell her all about how to contact you, how to get you to come to her, safehouses, all of it. I didn’t.  _ Obviously _ .”

Peter waits a moment for Stiles to elaborate. “But?” he prompts when Stiles doesn’t continue.

“But she still managed to fund the hit on Gerard,” Stiles says, hesitantly. “She’s got a, uh. An alias. It’s pretty airtight, so none of your screening shit would have thrown up flags.”

A few moments of road and quiet as Peter turns that one over and examines it in his mind. “So, what, she wanted to use me as a quick and dirty way to get Gerard out of the way in addition to having me kill you unintentionally? And take her money for it, oh, that’s a nice touch.” 

“That was the gist I got, yeah,” Stiles says. “But what I mean is that  _ I didn’t tell her _ about any of your contacts, any single way that she should have been able to get that hit to you without you knowing about it. And I don’t want to be the one to say it, but Peter… she had both of us. One day I have vital information that I’m not going to give up, the next day she doesn’t need it anymore, so into the trunk I go.”

Peter doesn’t do a lot of introspection, as a rule, but he’s not out of touch with his emotions. Still, the only way that he can describe what he’s currently feeling is with an emphatic, “Fuck.” And then, he sighs, flexes his fingers on the steering wheel to force them to loosen. “I wondered why it came through an older channel. I should have looked closer, it just seemed too good to pass up.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Stiles says. “And I’m not blaming Derek either, but I’m definitely pointing the finger at Kate fucking Argent. Again.”

“At least we know Derek is alive.” Peter glances away from the road again to see Stiles turning to watch him, a little bit of disbelief in his expression. “Oh, no, he’s safer than he was when you were in the trunk. It won’t take long for it to get back to her that there was only one body in that car, not two, so she’ll need him as a pawn. Before that, he was just… a trophy.”

The disgusted sound Stiles makes is absolutely a sentiment that Peter shares. 

“But if he  _ did _ give her the information, then we should be prepared for him to tell her everything else he knows, as well.” It’s a little painful to admit, if Peter is being honest, but he and Stiles share a lot of things, and pragmatism is one of them. 

“He doesn’t know much,” Stiles says, almost placatingly. Trying to comfort, maybe. “Much more about me than about you. So it’s safe to assume that my aliases and safehouses are burned, but yours aren’t.”

“And about…?”

“No.” Stiles is quiet. “No, he thinks they’re dead, too.” Another moment of silence between them. “We should have just moved him when we moved everyone else.” 

“We were worried about the attention that would come from all of them in one place,” Peter reminds him. “Chris and Allison in one little French town, with Scott and Isaac outside of town, it was already risky.”

“We should have just taken the risk,” Stiles insists, sharp even in his exhausted, harsh voice. “At least then he would have… I don’t know, only lost a few people instead of all of them. He’s not like us, Peter, he can’t take the hit and come out a harder person for it. He can’t live a life driven by pure spite and anger, he can’t make the choice to damn himself or someone he loves to take secrets to the grave. He sure as hell can’t choose between people,” Stiles adds, a hefty amount of self-loathing in the quiet finish.

Peter looks over again. The sun has started to go down, but it only serves to highlight the sickly coloring of half-healed bruises. The scratches make sense, now, and Peter is suddenly  _ angry _ about Kate Argent dragging her nails across Stiles’ skin like that. If they scar, he’ll personally make sure she knows exactly how he feels about it, for his sake and for Stiles’.

“Well.” Peter turns back to the road. Stiles needs a hotel, and probably some stitching up. They’re not going to make it as far as he wanted tonight, but that’s fine. Peter is nothing if he’s not flexible. “When we get him back, we’ll take him to France. Let him make the choice.”

He hears the shift again, of Stiles turning to look at him. It always seems like they’re looking at each other when one of them is looking away. “What about us, Peter? When do we choose?” Stiles asks, and Peter thinks of an apartment in Sacramento and a boring life on the straight and narrow.

Then, he thinks of the blood sticking Stiles’ t-shirt to his back, the marks on Stiles’ wrists and ankles from the zip tie, how dark Gerard Argent’s trunk must have been on however long a journey Stiles had to take. How Stiles didn’t give up anything, didn’t speak a word, even not knowing if Derek was alive, if Stiles himself would live to see the next day. 

Peter considers, briefly, how he hadn’t even hesitated to cut those ties, how he’d never once considered turning the knife on Stiles instead. How satisfying it was to finally put a fatal bullet into Gerard Argent, how much he liked the sound of that explosion behind him. He knows that he’s going to take Stiles to the first halfway-decent hotel room he finds, and he knows that he’ll patch Stiles up, stitch anything that needs stitched and throw out the bloody clothes. 

And Peter thinks about how he’s going to spread Stiles out on those halfway-decent hotel sheets to fuck him slow and deep and intense, until Stiles is crying and flying somewhere high above the guilt, until Stiles forgets all about what he’s seen and what he’s done and the choices he’s made to get where they are today.

The answer is simple in its complication, all the factors and variables and situations and scenarios adding up to one inevitable conclusion. A road to hell, but never paved with good intentions in mind, not even from the beginning.

“Sweetheart,” Peter says, gentle. “We made our choices a long time ago.”

Stiles is quiet for a long moment. It’s so uncharacteristic, how much he hasn’t spoken this entire time, how he hasn’t dominated the conversation with rambling and innuendo. 

“Yeah,” Stiles finally says, and tilts his head back against the seat as Peter looks over, pain clenching his jaw and tightening the skin around his eyes, like he’s finally given in to how much he actually hurts at the moment. “Yeah, I guess we did.”


End file.
